Hibs go into Saturday’s game at Easter Road after a tough defeat at Ibrox and they will be looking to avoid any horrors against the current champions.
Last weekend Montgomery chose to go with the attacking 4-4-2 formation that had resulted in the manager going unbeaten in his first six games.
In hindsight that decision, amongst other factors, likely contributed to the tough 4-0 loss his team suffered, however post-match Montgomery insisted that he will still stick to his attacking guns moving forward.
He spoke to BBC Scotland and said: “I am not going to change the way we play…the shape is the shape. We defend with 10, we attack with 10, nothing changes.”
Saturday’s game will tell whether Montgomery does persist with the same set up against another member of the Old Firm or whether some lessons were learned following his first defeat as boss.
The match is the first in a busy week for Hibs with Ross County in the Scottish Premiership and Aberdeen in the ViaPlay Cup Semi-Final to come.
Despite it still being early in the campaign it does feel like a potentially season defining seven days as defeat in the next two league games could mean Hibs slip to second from the bottom.
Celtic are off the back off a mid-week draw to Athletic Madrid in the Champions League, a game in which they put a lot of effort into grinding out a result against a top European team.
Hibs may look to take advantage of that and use their possession-based approach to stretch Celtic’s potentially tired legs.
Hibs sent a development squad to the Northeast of England for a mid-season friendly against Sunderland on Monday, the game gave first team players the chance to get some much-needed match action.
Nick Montgomery said to HibsTV: “It’s always good to get minutes in the legs of players that have not been playing, it’s really important that we have everyone ready, we have a busy schedule coming up.”
Looking ahead to Celtic the Head Coach said: “I want to see a little bit of reaction from the game last week’s result.
“There were some basic errors we made as a team in terms of our defensive structure, so we’ve worked hard this week to fix that.”
Montgomery also revealed that whilst Hibs are boosted by Harry McKirdy, Chris Cadden and Jake Doyle-Hayes returning to training this week they will not be available for selection until January at the earliest.
Hibs will look for a similar result to the last time the two sides met back in May where they won 4-2 and on the other hand Celtic seek their sixth league win in a row to stretch their lead at the top of the table to 10 points.
Masters Student currently studying Sports Journalism at Edinburgh Napier University.
